War on drugs: Truce in sight?

A national study on racial profiling in marijuana arrests boots up a dusty chapter of my life.

Nearly 40 years ago, I wrote a Ph.D. dissertation titled “The Literature of Addiction.”

It was, if I do say so myself, a windy, pretentious and torturously written history of the drug-driven personal narratives of a long line of writers from Thomas De Quincey (“Confessions of an English Opium Eater,” 1821) to the late William “Naked Lunch” Burroughs, the downbeat dean of the Beat Generation.

If I came away with one practical conclusion from two years of research, it was this:

The documented sorrows of drug use are many, but anyone who believes the 100-plus-year War on Drugs has been beneficial to the nation’s health is higher than a hashish eater (the term of art for 19th-century potheads).

The new research by the American Civil Liberties Union finds that blacks, who as a group do not use marijuana any more than whites, are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for possession.

For two reasons, the ACLU’s conclusions do not directly reflect the realities of San Diego — or any other California county.

Sheriff Bill Gore, who was familiar with the survey’s broad conclusions, emphasized that “you don’t go to jail for pot possession.” If you’re smoking in a deputy’s face, you’re likely to receive a ticket, not a misdemeanor arrest, he said.

Two years ago, the state reduced simple possession of a small amount of marijuana from a misdemeanor to an infraction along the lines of speeding.

Still, Dooley-Sammuli sees a systemic pattern of racial bias in police contacts. Gore bristles at that familiar charge, insisting his deputies try to be “colorblind.” He blames the racially skewed makeup of the jail population on gangs and socio-economic factors.

That debate goes on, but it’s fair to say the ACLU report swings and largely misses the Golden State.

Nevertheless, the unequal arrest rates do line up with this nation’s history of racially freighted drug hysteria, from Chinese opium dens to Mexican marijuana fields in the ’30s.

Over many decades, the War on Drugs has developed into a self-perpetuating government enterprise that measures its success with seizures and arrests, often of the marginalized poor who lack political power. (Burroughs, a Harvard-educated street addict, loved to satirize the rapacious anti-drug industry.)

Just imagine how rapidly drug policies would soften if everyone, no matter what race or income, who had ever used recreational drugs were rounded up, booked and charged.

Congress would set a land-speed record for reform. (That is, if there were enough legislators left for quorums.)

In reality, recreational drugs are as American a rite of passage as a first kiss or a first bottle of beer.

Prospective FBI agents are no longer denied jobs so long as their drug use was long ago and “experimental,” a euphemism for recreational, Gore, the former G Man, tells me.

Barack Obama was a young stoner in Hawaii. George Bush and Bill Clinton had their heady encounters.

So, given the fact that so many have used drugs, why is it acceptable that black kids in Washington, D.C., run a greater risk of disfiguring their lives with a criminal record than privileged kids in prep-school blazers?

The only explanation is that there’s a war on, and vulnerable casualties must be counted to justify the budgeted billions of dollars. Prisons and jails must be filled.

Obama has said the War on Terror is winding down. Well, good luck with that.

But while he’s declaring eventual peace, Obama might say the same about the War on Drugs.

California and other forward-leaning states are pushing for a truce on the front lines. The Libertarian stance of zero-intolerance is slowly becoming mainstream.